


The Repository of Consolation

by Taz



Series: Methos's Journal [1]
Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Highlander - Freeform, Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taz/pseuds/Taz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A page of Methos's journal, written by his hand in Venice on December 25, 1902.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Repository of Consolation

Arrived yesterday via the causeway for the first time, blessing whatever god currently directing the hands of engineers. Could feel the wind ripping across the lagoon the entire way. Entered in by the garden gate. It may have been the light, or the few pale roses still clinging to the bushes, but my hand shook as I put the key in the lock. I don’t know what I was expecting. Nothing flew out. Only the smell of damp and a house shut up too long.

Manini had left a packet; I took it into the yellow salon. A note complaining I should have given him better notice. He could have sent people to clean. Dust everywhere. Foot prints in the hall. Chimneys need sweeping Something died. Says I should reconsider letting him lease the house; there have been inquiries, he included a telegram from an American railroad fortune: MUST HAVE CA DARGENTO STOP INFORMED BROWNING SLEPT HERE STOP WIFE REVERES STOP  MONEY NO OBJECT. Will have Manini send reply: WRONG POET DEFINITELY STOP.

The packet also contained the accounts from the settlement of the Italian Funds, which I put aside to go through later. The was The Lancet and two letters forwarded from Paris. One of the from the Good General himself -- endless twiddling about the peril to my immortal soul -- the second, with exquisite timing, was from Himself -- three pages of oozing self pity and accusations. Says P told him _I _was the one who wrote that damming review in _Mercure_. Unfortunately, it wasn't. Wish I had. His last book was execrable. He’s lost any notion of the difference between posture and style. Come to think of it, if that book had been by one of the New Women writers it could have been a hit in the popular press. I’ll suggest he try a female _non de plume _next time. That will ‘kill’ him.

With that pleasant thought I needed some air. Strange that I can forgive him anything, anywhere, but here. Opened the window above the watergate. Was sure I was going to be sick, until I remembered it was the same window through which I pitched him into the canal -- the look of disbelief on his face. The water below was as dark and it smells as foul but I don’t remember the sound of waves slapping so high on the steps. The light was already going and I couldn’t see Caterina’s picture, but I knew she’d have been laughing, too. That’s when it finally settled on me that I’m really home. Left my things were I dropped them and went out to find a café.

Street lamps have replaced torches, but Florian’s is still here - had them put up a basket for me, and made note tell Manini to find me a cook - and the market in _Campo S. Giacomo di Rialto_. But there are fewer people, although there were parties of revelers on the water. Music. Barges lit up with Japanese lanterns.  As I walked toward the bridge, a boatman sang to me from a gondola - the temptation of remembered pleasures - and I let him row me to San Marco.

Bells were ringing all over the city, except there. Seems the campanile dissolved into a heap of bricks last July and buried the Loggetta. It’s been over three hundred and fifty years but, for those five cold days I spent hanging half way up the side in a cage, I’m not likely to subscribe to the restoration. Yet the place where it stood looks like an empty tooth socket and the clock tower looks lonely. I have to do something with the money. Once the piazza would have been filled with the booths of traders and there would have been musicians and soldiers about, as well as monks and the young bravos of the stocking clubs showing off. Not tonight. Finally admitted I was going to attend Mass, but not there, too many tidy respectable souls about.

Had my pet gondolier take me to _San Georgio Maggiore_ and dismissed him. (A good natured scoundrel; I have his direction if I want to engage him.) As I entered Palladio’s just-barely Christian temple, I became aware that I wasn’t alone. There were too many shadows to see who it might be, the pews were filling and, there, of all places, it didn’t matter. I found a seat and lost myself in ritual, music, incense, and candlelight, and so it was that found myself sharing the kiss of peace with the fairer and milder of the MacLeods. He came home with me.

Florian’s had packed sausage, bread, cheese and two bottles of wine. I found some candles. We went into the salon. The first thing he saw was Caterina’s picture. ‘Titian,’ he said, and lit all the candles to see it the better, wincing when he saw how the panel was gashed.

It’s an enigmatic painting. A fountain in the center, on one side of which sits a woman--Caterina--dressed in the style of the day, the _cinquecento_. She gazes as calmly as ever at the viewer. On the other side another woman--nude this time--is rising from a bench. The wind is blowing her hair and cloak about and, yet, she looks affectionately toward her sister-self. Between them Cupid stirs the water in the fountain bowl. This was done to celebrate the scandalous wedding of Caterina Fausti and Marco, a Venetian _cittadino ordinario._ There is no portrait of Marco in the painting, and it was damaged--hacked with a sword--by a fool poet, outraged at the very thought of chastity and passion reconciled.

That was a long time ago.

MacLeod and I ate and made do on the floor of the salon, and here rest merry. It is good to be home.

 

 

 

 December 25, 1902, Venice, Cá D’Argento

 


End file.
